User talk:Trike

I have reviewed the pages you mentioned and here are my observations about the confusions encountered in trying to contribute local knowledge.

The developmental nature of several "products" by FamilySearch and reliance on purchased data for and from England has created some strange looking page headings wiki! The server failures and inability to fix information layers in England Jurisdictions 1851 coupled with feedback failures for "Standard Finder" mean that even when that site removes incorrect entries such as the mythical "Norfolkshire" other parts of the site do not use the revised version and errors persist.

The Sussex group experience also shows that volunteers in Support do not always appreciate the significance to the FamilySearch research wiki of these system failures in the construction of pages in counties.

The USA-centric approach of the wiki omits many local record sources. From my own visits to the Family History Library and correspondence the wiki was driven by the efforts of Library based research staff. Enquiries there are of course very different from enquiries to English Archives staff and the research needs in for example coalfield communities family history lie outside the enquiry experience in Salt Lake City. The South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire pages of the wiki have been created in a way which does not acknowledge the growth of Anglican and other faiths church and chapel records after the 1850's. Put simply until FamilySearch realises the demand for such information it will construct information to a broadly uniform format which does not acknowledge local needs.

There is a group of contributions which add gazetteer information and in so doing remove the invitation to contribute parish history. Much of the gazetteer content is from copyright sources and whole county parish pages contain such "parish history" which appears to form the sole content of the parish history. Whilst a link to such information may be of interest the crucial information that a Yorkshire parish is within the Southwell diocese is ignored; the post 1848 demolition of the church and relocation to the new site is omitted which as we know is commonplace in mining communities where mining companies provided church and non-conformist chapel buildings as well as the terrraced housing for miners. The approach of adding gazetteer material is not perhaps a good one and omitting the fact that parishes (and records) changed over time. The 12th century "chapelry" replaced by a series of larger parish churches in subsequent centuries and then a succession of other churches after 1851 is not described in the gazetteer.

The history of the civil parish is overlooked in the prescriptive headings which are presumably intended to offer a "standard" page of the Anglican parishes. American spellings jar the English reader who is not North American resident and moderation of contributions by those unfamiliar with local place spellings or history is another factor which alienates English genealogists.

Given the organisational "teething problems" affecting the FamilySearch site, contributing local information is an uphill task; the prescriptive page format ( not a feature of Wikipedia for example) would lead most English potential contributors to contribute there first and then consider whether to contribute to the FamilySearch attempt to create a family history version. Until FamilySearch resolve some of their organisational and developmental issues local contributors will find their knowledge will more readily enter the online information network through other sites.

I think given the local contributions nearing partial completion that until the corrections needed to Family Search film listing and the version of that display is resolved by engineering to the site little else remains for local contributors. Presumably FamilySearch will be responsible for the film number information for each church and hopefully how they intend to move away from 1851 parish format they have adopted. I hope that in future they will adopt an approach to English readership (adopting English spelling) and research needs rather than assume the wiki is for North American use. Descriptions of online images from other sites, census images and indexes ( who other than Family History Library visitors uses England/Wales census microfilm these days?) and other English Archive transcript series and finding aids would be useful in future if the intention is to provide non North American visitors with answers to questions about access to records.

I will revise monthly some of the diocesan record information for Southwell and Nottingham and the development of research in the church history project will hopefully assist researchers for Anglican churches and parishes.Hucknall 02:52, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

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